935 results match your criteria: "Kennedy School[Affiliation]"

Article Synopsis
  • Scholars are concerned that deep partisan divides among the public pose a risk to American democracy.
  • A large study with over 32,000 participants tested 25 different strategies aimed at decreasing partisan animosity and support for undemocratic practices.
  • Results showed that highlighting relatable individuals with differing beliefs and emphasizing shared identities were effective at reducing animosity, while correcting misunderstandings about rival views helped lessen support for undemocratic actions.
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Article Synopsis
  • Benzodiazepines are often prescribed to older patients after an acute ischemic stroke, despite guidelines advising against this for those aged 65 and over.
  • An analysis of Medicare claims from 2013 to 2021 showed that 4.9% of stroke survivors started benzodiazepine treatment, with higher initiation rates among females and in the southeastern US.
  • Although there was a slight decline in new prescriptions over the years, many patients received overly long prescriptions, indicating a need for better prescribing policies.
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Critical Health Care Challenges for the Next U.S. President.

N Engl J Med

October 2024

From the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (R.J.B., D.B., B.D.S., M.B.R, J.F.F., J.J.K.), Harvard Medical School (J.M.M.), and Brigham and Women's Hospital (J.M.M.) - all in Boston; New York University, New York (S.G.); Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville (S.B.D.); Ohio State University, Columbus (R.Y.); and the Harvard Kennedy School, Cambridge, MA (M.A.).

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The literature engaging political theory in STS often puts forward a deficit model view of STS, in which homegrown STS ideas about politics, such as co-production, are either treated as having an insufficient account of the political or not read as political theory at all. This article challenges the deficit discourse by reading co-production as a full-blown political theory in its own right, in particular by showing how it investigates normative questions of 'the good' that are central to any theorization of politics. Where political theory often concerns itself with the construction and application of universal political ideals-such as of the good citizen, legitimate procedures or smart outcomes-co-production looks at empirical sites where citizens, procedures, and outcomes articulate understandings of the good held by political actors in situ.

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Background: Effective treatment of bipolar disorder (BD) requires prompt response to mood episodes. Preliminary studies suggest that predictions based on passive sensor data from personal digital devices can accurately detect mood episodes (e.g.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study investigates the health consequences of sudden medication interruptions due to arbitrary price changes in Medicare’s drug budget for 65-year-olds, revealing significant adverse effects on mortality.
  • A decrease of $100 in monthly budget leads to a 13.9% increase in mortality risk, highlighting the vulnerability of patients who are unaware of the serious consequences of stopping medications.
  • Machine learning identifies high-risk patients who disproportionately reduce usage of critical drugs, countering standard economic predictions and demonstrating that cost-sharing strategies can be inefficient and harmful to patient health.
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Implications of the 2024 Election Outcome for U.S. Health Policy.

N Engl J Med

October 2024

From the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston (R.J.B., J.M.B.), and the Harvard Kennedy School, Cambridge, MA (N.B.L.).

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Article Synopsis
  • Identifying new infections during a pandemic is essential for effective public health responses, but it poses significant challenges.
  • This study aimed to evaluate how nonprobability online surveys could track COVID-19 infections over time, even when traditional testing was not available.
  • Conducted across the U.S. from June 2020 to January 2023, the surveys gathered data from over 300,000 participants and revealed a strong correlation between survey results and officially reported COVID-19 cases.
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Importance: Since 2019 and 2020, Medicare Advantage (MA) plans have been able to offer supplemental benefits that address long-term services and supports (LTSS) and social determinants of health (SDOH).

Objective: To examine the temporal trends and geographic variation in enrollment in MA plans offering LTSS and SDOH benefits.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This cross-sectional study used publicly available data to examine changes in beneficiary enrollment and plan offerings of LTSS and SDOH benefits from the benefits data from the second quarter of each year and other data from April of each year except 2024, for which the first quarter was the latest for benefits data and January the latest for other data at the time of analysis.

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The racial gap in infant mortality is a pressing public-health concern, and [B. N. Greenwood et al.

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Objective: Environmental hazards and heightened neighborhood social vulnerability coexist and disproportionately affect minoritized populations. We investigated associations between exposure to adverse environmental burden concentrated in areas with high social vulnerability and care fragmentation (missed appointments, emergency department visits, and hospitalizations) and social needs (eg, food and housing insecurity) among individuals with rheumatic conditions.

Methods: We identified adults receiving care in a Massachusetts multihospital system with at least two rheumatic disease codes and complete street addresses.

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Case 27-2024: A 24-Year-Old Man with Pain and Dyspnea.

N Engl J Med

September 2024

From Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Cambridge (R.P.W.), and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (R.P.W.), Harvard Business School (R.P.W.), the Departments of Medicine (M.V.B., K.M.T., D.M.D.), Radiology (J.-A.O.S.), and Pathology (D.C.S.), Massachusetts General Hospital, and the Departments of Medicine (M.V.B., K.M.T., D.M.D.), Radiology (J.-A.O.S.), and Pathology (D.C.S.), Harvard Medical School, Boston - all in Massachusetts.

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Rationale: Despite guideline warnings, older acute ischemic stroke (AIS) survivors still receive benzodiazepines (BZD) for agitation, insomnia, and anxiety despite being linked to severe adverse effects, such as excessive somnolence and respiratory depression. Due to polypharmacy, drug metabolism, comorbidities, and complications during the sub-acute post-stroke period, older adults are more susceptible to these adverse effects. We examined the impact of receiving BZDs within 30 days post-discharge on survival among older Medicare beneficiaries after an AIS.

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Since the mid-1970s, there has been a sharp rise in the prevalence of "bad jobs" in the U.S. labor market, characterized by stagnant wages, unstable work schedules, and limited fringe benefits.

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Drivers, adaptations, and public impacts of hospital closures: implications for policy.

Front Public Health

August 2024

Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, United States.

A concerning number of hospitals have closed in the US in recent years and there are many other hospitals that are at significant risk of closure in the coming years. The COVID-19 pandemic magnified the trend of hospital closures, raising further concerns about the potential impacts of hospital closures and the important need for devising policies that can mitigate them. To devise such policies, however, we first need to better understand the main drivers, potential adaptations by providers, and the widespread public impacts of hospital closures.

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Article Synopsis
  • This study investigated how common irritability is among U.S. adults and its relationship with major depressive and anxiety symptoms through an online survey involving over 42,000 participants.
  • Results showed that women, younger individuals, those with lower education levels, and lower household incomes reported higher irritability scores.
  • The findings also revealed a concerning link between increased irritability and suicidal thoughts, highlighting the need for further exploration of irritability's effects on mental health outside of immediate mood disorders.
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Breast Reduction Epidemiology and Complications in Nonbinary, Transgender, and Cisgender Adults.

J Surg Res

October 2024

Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts; Department of Surgery, Patient-Reported Outcomes, Value and Experience (PROVE) Center, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts.

Introduction: Research in gender-affirming chest surgery has primarily compared cisgender versus transgender and gender-diverse (TGD) people, without specifically addressing nonbinary people. This study will assess surgical complications between cisgender, transgender, and nonbinary adults undergoing breast reductions.

Methods: The National Surgical Quality Improvement Program databases from 2015 to 2021 were used to identify TGD patients who underwent breast reduction (Current Procedural Terminology code: 19318) and cisgender patients who underwent this procedure for cosmesis or cancer prophylaxis.

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Patterns of Chemsex Substance Use and Its Association with HIV Transmission Risk Among Men Who Have Sex with Men in Thailand: A Latent Class Analysis.

Arch Sex Behav

October 2024

Center of Excellence in Research on Gender, Sexuality and Health, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Mahidol University, Nakhon Pathom, 73170, Thailand.

Sexualized substance use or "chemsex" may contribute to the HIV epidemic among men who have sex with men (MSM) in Thailand. Specific patterns of chemsex use may be associated with different HIV/STI transmission risks. We examined typologies and correlates of sexualized substance use among a sample of high-risk MSM (n = 532) who had attended a private sex party or circuit party in the past three years using latent class analysis.

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The Pathology of US Health Care-The Example of Weight Loss Medications.

JAMA Health Forum

August 2024

Department of Economics, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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Importance: Trust in physicians and hospitals has been associated with achieving public health goals, but the increasing politicization of public health policies during the COVID-19 pandemic may have adversely affected such trust.

Objective: To characterize changes in US adults' trust in physicians and hospitals over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic and the association between this trust and health-related behaviors.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This survey study uses data from 24 waves of a nonprobability internet survey conducted between April 1, 2020, and January 31, 2024, among 443 455 unique respondents aged 18 years or older residing in the US, with state-level representative quotas for race and ethnicity, age, and gender.

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Fall-related injuries (FRIs) are a major cause of hospitalizations among older patients, but identifying them in unstructured clinical notes poses challenges for large-scale research. In this study, we developed and evaluated Natural Language Processing (NLP) models to address this issue. We utilized all available clinical notes from the Mass General Brigham for 2,100 older adults, identifying 154,949 paragraphs of interest through automatic scanning for FRI-related keywords.

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Importance: Poverty is associated with greater barriers to health care and worse health outcomes, but it remains unclear whether income support can improve health.

Objective: To examine the effect of cash benefits on health care utilization and health.

Design, Setting, And Participants: The City of Chelsea, Massachusetts, a low-income community near Boston, randomly assigned individuals by lottery to receive cash benefits.

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